


Illuminated

by raphrodo



Category: Full House (US)
Genre: because jesse is a tiny baby, but no romance, the very beginnings of an unrequited crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raphrodo/pseuds/raphrodo
Summary: Thirteen-year-old Jesse is having a shitty time at his sister's wedding reception. Somehow he ends up bonding with Pam's most embarrassing friend, who doesn't want to be there, either.
Relationships: Joey Gladstone & Jesse Katsopolis
Kudos: 16





	Illuminated

Jesse was seriously considering setting something on fire, that’s how bored he was. For reasons he would probably never understand, his parents and Danny’s parents had frantically pooled together to put on this farce — they’d said something about how Pam and Danny needed a “respectable wedding.” Jesse didn’t see the point since they’d already gone out and eloped like a couple of morons. He’d refused to go at first, but just so they’d know how he felt about it. Of course he came in the end. His dad would’ve whooped his ass if he hadn’t.

Speaking of which… he glanced over at Danny, who looked like a goddamn scarecrow even in a tuxedo. His own mother had offered to apply makeup to Danny’s stupid face to cover the shiner Jesse had given him, but you could still make it out if you knew it was there. Jesse smiled to himself. At least that was one ray of sunshine to this otherwise depressing day.

A handful of relatives had crawled out of the woodwork to see Pam married, even a couple from Greece, and Jesse had been subjected to more kissing, cheek-pinching, back-slapping, and bear hugs than he ever cared to endure in his lifetime. Even worse, some of them still hadn’t adjusted to the name change even though he’d been Jesse for years now. If he had to hear the name Hermes one more time…

“Hermes! Come and dance with your cousin!” some aunt or another called, dragging a scowling girl about his age over to him.

 _That’s it. I can’t take this anymore._ “Actually, I think I’m getting a headache,” he said, as apologetically as he could manage. “I need to… uhh… get some fresh air. I’ll be right back.” He ducked out the door of the dark, crowded church before he could hear a reply.

The sun had recently set, so there was just a little light clinging to the edges of the sky. Jesse closed his eyes and inhaled as deeply as possible, taking in the cool air and the quiet. He really had no idea how long it would be before his parents realised he’d left, so he resolved to savor whatever precious time he had to himself.

Once he opened his eyes, though, he noticed another figure standing in the far corner of the parking lot, and the flickering glow of a lit cigarette. Maybe someone else had had enough of this bullshit fake wedding reception, too. He edged closer, squinting to try and make out who the mysterious figure was. By the time he was close enough to realise it was pretty much the last person he wanted to interact with right now, he’d been  
noticed.

“Hey,” said his sister’s idiot friend Joey, giving a little wave. He didn’t sound quite like his usual cheerful, obnoxious self. He sounded tired, or depressed, or something — for him, that is, which would be like normal for anyone else.

“Hey,” Jesse responded, still walking closer for some reason.

“What are you doing out here?” Joey asked.

“I could ask you the same thing. Aren’t you like, the best man or something? Aren’t you supposed to hang around?”

Joey shrugged, flicking ash onto the ground between them. “Needed a smoke. Aren’t you like, the bride’s baby brother? Pretty sure you’re supposed to be in there, too.”

“Hey, let’s cool it with the ‘baby’ stuff, huh? I know I’m younger than you, but let’s not forget, I already beat the shit out of your friend.”

Joey cracked up at that. “Fair enough. And how could I forget? That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” He paused to take another drag of his cigarette. Jesse watched him. Since when did Joey even smoke? “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love the guy. But seeing him get his ass handed to him by an eighth grader was probably one of the highlights of my life so far.”

Jesse didn’t appreciate the way he managed to make “eighth grader” sound even more condescending than “baby brother.” But at least Joey seemed to have enjoyed seeing Danny get hurt. Maybe he wasn’t a complete imbecile after all.

"Yeah, well, how was I supposed to react? Some dweeb asshole just runs off and marries my sister in secret? Pam’s only eighteen!”

“So is Danny,” Joey pointed out. “They’re both pretty dumb, if you ask me. No offense to your sister or anything.”

That was surprising. Joey was calling Pam and Danny dumb? First of all, look who’s talking. “I thought you were all for it. I mean, you guys have all been best friends since I was like, nine.”

Joey rolled his eyes. “Been best friends with Danny even longer than that, maybe unfortunately. But you think they’re gonna listen to me? I’m the comic relief friend. I’m there to do funny voices, not give advice. They got this idea in their heads that they had to get married before… well, anyway. No way I could convince them otherwise. And now I’m here, standing around in the parking lot while they shove cake in each other’s faces for the camera.” He shuddered. “Pretty gross.”

Jesse was only vaguely paying attention to the last half of what Joey had said. He was focused on what he hadn’t said. “Before what?” he asked firmly.

Joey glanced at him, then away. “Nothing.”

Jesse bit his lip. He wasn’t stupid. He knew why people got married in a hurry. “Pam’s pregnant, right?”

Joey looked at him again, his eyes wider this time. “I’m not supposed to—”

“Just answer the question, huh?”

He stared at him for a moment longer before nodding. “Yeah.”

Jesse felt his hands involuntarily curl into fists, then uncurl. Curl, uncurl. “Shit.” He kicked at nothing in particular. _“Shit!”_

“Hey… watch the language, young man.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“That’s it, you go to your room!”

“I said shut the—” He stopped when he managed to look at Joey again. He was standing with one hand on his hip, the other holding the last of his cigarette a few inches from his face, which had the biggest, stupidest grin on it. He was fucking with him. Of course he was.

“Temper, temper…” Joey said, wagging a finger. “Just make sure if you’re gonna hit someone over this, it’s Danny again, not me, yeah?”

“You are so weird.”

Joey only shrugged, and it was quiet between them for a minute. As soon as Joey had stepped out his cigarette, he pulled out another and lit it. Wow, he really was a smoker, huh? Go figure. It actually looked kind of cool, which was something he would never, ever, in a million years, admit about Joey Gladstone.

“Hey, uh…” Jesse started, trying his very hardest to sound cool and adult about it, “can I bum one o’ those?”

Joey snorted loudly. “Can you _what?”_

He tried to remain unflustered. “I said can I have one of your cigarettes.”

Joey was staring at him again. “I… no? You’re like, twelve years old. Anybody ever tell you smoking’s bad for you?”

“I’m thirteen and I don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s bad for me.”

“Turns your fingers yellow, too. It’s pretty nasty.”

“How come you smoke, then?”

Joey seemed to consider that for a moment. “’Cause I’m a troubled youth,” he finally said, kinda smugly so it was hard to tell if it was supposed to be a joke or not.

Jesse almost said, _Yeah, right,_ but then he remembered something that had happened a couple years ago. Joey had been at the house for days, not even leaving to sleep — they’d put him up in the guest room — and Jesse had been getting fed up. He complained to Pam and their mom about it. _Why doesn’t he go home? He smells awful!_ They’d exchanged dark looks with each other before gently explaining, _Joey’s got a tough home life, Jesse. Sometimes he needs to be somewhere else for a while. And I hope you haven’t said anything to him about the smell. It’s not his fault._ Jesse didn’t know exactly what they meant by that, but he did get a weird feeling about the whole thing and decided to let it go.

“That’s the difference between you and me,” Joey went on. “You want to be troubled, but you don’t have any real problems. So you act all aggressive and angsty so people will worry about you. I _have_ problems, but nobody worries because I pretend like I don’t.” He looks at Jesse like he’s challenging him. “Am I right?”

It was weird. How the hell had Joey read him like that so effortlessly? He decided the only way to respond was to try and beat him at his own game. “I think people worry about you more than you realise. They just hide it, too, ‘cause they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They’re all walking on eggshells around you so they don’t accidentally make you cry or something.”

Joey frowned. It was a rare look for him, in Jesse’s experience, but he would have thought he’d enjoy it more. Instead he just felt kinda bad.

“You really are a little asshole, aren’t you?”

“Well then I guess that makes you a big asshole.”

And already the grin was back. Jesse couldn’t help it — he grinned, too.

“I do have problems,” he said suddenly, though he had no idea why. He just wanted to keep talking to Joey for some reason. “Well, maybe not real bad ones. But I have problems.”

“If it’s girl problems I doubt I can help,” Joey said. “Not really my area. But lay it on me anyway.”

Help? Was he asking for his help? The thought unsettled Jesse. “Not girl problems. It’s even dumber than that,” he admitted.

Joey puffed at his cigarette some more, waiting. “Well?”

Jesse took a deep breath. “It’s kinda hard to explain…” He glanced at Joey’s impatient expression, then at the ground. “It’s just that… sometimes I feel like I don’t really belong anywhere. Like I was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and I was supposed to be somewhere else, but I’m stuck where I am and it doesn’t… fit. Like I can’t get used to anything even though it’s my life. Home, school, church, any of it… it just feels like it’s all made for… other people. People who aren’t like me. And I don’t know if it’s something wrong with me or something wrong with everything and everyone else. But I hate it. Whatever it is, I hate it.”

Silence again, and then, horror of horrors, he felt Joey’s hand on his shoulder. He panicked and shrugged him off, but Joey just kept the hand hovering slightly over the spot where he’d placed it. “Hey,” he said softly, and Jesse forced himself to look up. The sudden eye contact when their faces were so close to each other gave him another weird feeling that he couldn’t name even if he wanted to. “Looks like we have something in common after all.”

Jesse gave him a skeptical look, although actually he thought he believed him. “You feel like that?”

Joey nodded. “Absolutely. All the time.” He finally pulled his hand away from its hovering spot over Jesse’s shoulder, but didn’t step back. “That’s why I got into the whole comedy thing. I had to build my own world, kind of. If you make your own place in the world that’s just for you, there’s a much bigger chance you’ll ‘fit’ in it. You know what I mean?”

Jesse nodded. Suddenly he had a newfound respect for all of Joey’s corny jokes and Bullwinkle impressions he’d been subjected to over the years. Well… they were still annoying, but at least he understood a little better now.

“I’ll bet that’s why you’re so into Elvis,” Joey offered, and Jesse felt his cheeks start to burn. He got teased all the time for his Elvis obsession. Only girls were _obsessed_ with Elvis. And he could never explain why he was, but here was his sister’s friend trying to explain it for him. “You connect with him somehow, so you surround yourself with him as much as possible. Because you feel more normal with Elvis, and because of that, with music in general. More yourself. Is it like that?”

Jesse nodded again, slowly. It was true, or at least it was part of the truth. He felt himself on the verge of admitting something else, and that alarmed him. He couldn’t talk about that. To anyone. Then again… “Why are girl problems ‘not really your area’? Can’t get a date?”

Joey glared at him, then laughed suddenly. “Ouch. And I thought we were becoming such great friends.”

Now it was Jesse’s turn to be impatient. “Well?” he echoed Joey from earlier in the conversation.

Joey looked around uneasily, shifting his weight a little. “Guess I brought it up,” he said.

“Yeah. You did.”

A hand ran through long, blond hair. “Okay, but this is between us, right?”

“Not like I’m gonna be telling anybody about this conversation anyway.”

“Right.” Joey laughed. “Yeah, well. You’ve probably already figured it out while I’ve been stalling, so. Yeah. I’m gay. Uh, I mean I guess there’s a chance I’m bisexual, but I definitely prefer guys.” He shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of it or anything. It’s just that it’s hard to know how people are gonna react to it.”

Jesse didn’t respond to that. He was suddenly feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his chest and he really just wanted it to leave.

“Pam and Danny know, but that’s pretty much it,” Joey went on. “I mean… I got called faggot a lot at school, but I don’t think anyone really meant it like that. They just didn’t like me.”

It was a risky question, but Jesse asked it anyway. The tight feeling in his chest was getting worse. “How old were you when you… you know… figured it out?” _Please don’t wonder why I’m asking you about this._

“Three.”

Jesse almost fell over. “You were _three???”_

Joey shrugged again. “Yeah. I’ve just pretty much always known. I can’t even really explain how. I just knew.”

“That’s insane.”

“I’ve been called that before, you know.”

“I’m shocked.”

Joey grinned at him. At some point during their conversation, the streetlights had come on, casting a stark light over their heads. Joey glanced at his watch, which was a ridiculous plastic thing made for little kids, with a picture of Popeye on it. Jesse had no idea where Joey had even found something like that that fit him. Like he clearly had to have gone out of his way. He really was so weird. “We’d better go back in. People will start to miss you at least, since you’ve got about a hundred relatives here.”

“They’ll be missing you because they’ll notice they haven’t heard any irritating impressions in a while.” It struck Jesse that this was by far the longest conversation they’d ever had, and Joey hadn’t done a single cartoon voice. There was more to this guy than met the eye.

“Then we’d really better get in there,” Joey said. “Come on, squirt. Let’s not keep the people waiting.” He crushed another cigarette butt underfoot, then froze sheepishly. “Hey… I know I’ve already told you half a dozen things I wasn’t supposed to. But, uh… nobody knows I smoke. Not even Danny. So…”

“I won’t say anything,” Jesse promised, “but we both smell like cigarettes now anyway.”

“Wanna tell everyone I caught you smoking out here? You can be the bad boy and pretend to hate my guts and all that, and no one gets in any real trouble.”

Jesse rolled his eyes. “Okay. Sure.” Joey reached over to tousle his hair, and he swatted him away. “Hey, hey, hey, hey! Watch the hair!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Joey laughed. “Let’s go.”

Jesse sat on his bed, fiddling with the lighter in his hands. He almost hadn’t noticed Joey slip it into the pocket of his leather jacket just before he left, and by the time he’d processed it, Joey had disappeared. He’d waited until he got home to take it out. The piece of paper it had been wrapped up in was lying next to him on his pillow, smoothed out as much as possible. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the blue-inked words written there in his mind.

_Kid,_   
_I figured this would make the whole thing more convincing. Just remember, smoking gives you bad breath. Use it to start a fire in the school bathroom or something. I don’t actually know if kids do that but it definitely sounds like it could be a thing._   
_Good luck with the Elvis thing. I mean that._   
_\--JG_

  
Once he was sure he had the note memorised, he held it up in front of him so it hung down between his thumb and forefinger. Then he brought the lighter up and set one corner on fire. He looked up at the mirror on the opposite wall, and watched his face become illuminated by the flame as it ate its way up toward his fingers.


End file.
